The Mahābhārata and the Yugas

Download or read book The Mahābhārata and the Yugas written by Luis González Reimann and published by Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers. This book was released on 2002 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book questions the conventional wisdom that a fully matured theory of the yugas - Hinduism's ages of the world - is integral to the Mahābhārata, and it illustrates how traditional commentators and modern scholars have read the later Purāṇic yuga theory into the Mahābhārata, in particular when it comes to placing the action at the beginning of the current terrible Kali Yuga. Luis González-Reiman discusses the meaning of key terms in the epic by examining the text and early Buddhist sources. This book also traces the sectarian appropriation of the yuga system in later literature and documents how modern religious movements have used the system to proclaim the arrival of a new, prosperous Kṛta Yuga, a phenomenon that coincides with New Age expectations.